Smedley (Via Facebook)Kimberley Smedley, who was arrested in Washington last November on charges that she administered illegal silicone implants on women seeking more pronounced backsides, pleaded guilty in federal court yesterday to introducing an adulterated medical device into interstate commerce.
Smedley, a Georgia native, admitted that she injected her clients’ posteriors with silicone from an unlabeled jug, and also used super glue and cotton balls in her procedures that took place in hotel rooms up and down the East Coast. Smedley had clients in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York.
While in Washington, Smedley reportedly paid a former D.C. police officer to be a lookout while she worked on her clients.
“She was charging up to $1,500 each for these series of injections and she used silicone that she bought commercially and she bought about 5,000 pounds of silicone over the course of 8 years,” said U.S. Attorney for Maryland Rod Rosenstein, according to WAMU.
The underground silicone-injection trade is something of a growing problem in the plastic surgery field. The New York Times last year ran a long story on how some transgender women, seeking to look more feminine, spend thousands of dollars on “pumpers”—people like Smedley who perform silicone injections for less than what a licensed surgeon would charge, but in unsupervised and unsafe conditions. Like hotel rooms.
The Food and Drug Administration began investigating Smedley last year after receiving a complaint from an exotic dancer in Baltimore who complained of developing pneumonia and fluid in her lungs after receiving four injections in her buttocks and hips from Smedley.
Smedley’s specialty has been well-known for years, though. Back in 2008, The New York Post investigated her activities there, which included “cramming almost a dozen women into a Manhattan hotel room.” At the time, Smedley was storing her silicone supply in an old Poland Spring water jug.
